Three of these directories will be empty on the root filesystem, so they only need to be created with ‘mkdir’ (make directory). The /proc directory is basically a stub under which the proc filesystem is placed. The directories /mnt and /usr are only mount points for use after the boot/root system is running. Hence again, these directories only need to be created. The rest need special attention see instructions at the buildroot link.

I tried this on Saturday (9th April) but I got a message saying the directories could not be created as they already existed, but I could only find Lost & Found. It later transpired I must have been looking at my Laptop Hard Drive rather than on the floppy, but I still had problems. I’d like to try the uncompressed variety when we next meet, but sadly think I need a little more “handholding” as to how exactly to do it (sorry Mike!)

Start by learning how to strip a working system down to the bare essentials needed to run one or two commands, so you know what it is you actually need. An excellent practical place to do this is the Linux BootDisk Howto, (link above) or for a more theoretical approach try From PowerUp to Bash Prompt.

To learn how to build a working Linux system entirely from source code, the place to go is theLinux From Scratch project.

They have an entire book of step-by-step instructions you can read online or download. Be sure to check out the other sections of their main page, including Beyond Linux From Scratch, Hardened Linux From Scratch, their Hints directory, and their LiveCD project. (They also have mailing lists which are better sources of answers to Linux-system building questions than the busybox list.)

If you want an automated yet customizable system builder which produces a BusyBox and uClibc based system, try buildroot, which is another project by the maintainer of the uClibc (Erik Andersen). Download the tarball, extract it, unset CC, make. For more instructions, see the website.